


Simply Simple

by GrinningColossus



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: A little bit of violence, F/M, Fingering, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Smut, and banter, god just shut up and kiss already
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-22 01:26:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13753332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrinningColossus/pseuds/GrinningColossus
Summary: Deacon and Fixer are out on a recon mission on the shores of Lake Cochituate. It's set to be a pretty easy job, if a little boring. As it tends to happen, however, things get...complicated.





	Simply Simple

**Author's Note:**

> Title, lyrics, and inspiration taken from Mother Mother's "Simply Simple". Just as you suspected I did have to look up the pronunciation for Lake Cochituate. Massachusetts, you crazy.

 

* * *

_Take me lightly, I am not the way I ought to be_

_I’m just the way I’ve got to be_

_Take me slowly, or else you may come by injury_

_I’ll hurt you emotionally_  

* * *

  

Deacon pointed to her Pip Boy and asked, “Does that thing have a tape in it?”, apropos of nothing.

“Yeah, why?”

Without further prompting he grabbed her wrist, turning the face of the Pip Boy up. “Testing, testing. Okay, day one of Operation Bored As Shit. All is clear on Lake Cockyhacky.”

“Cochituate.”

“Gesundheit. As I was saying, we’re eleven hours in and haven’t heard or seen so much as a peep.”

Fixer rolled her eyes. “There’s nothing to see yet, we’ve been over this.”

“Excuse me,” he said pointedly, his eyes surely stern behind his sunglasses. “I am trying to record a mission log here, do you mind?”

She laughed, wrenching her arm away from him. He was right about one thing: the lake was calm as a mirror, and in the growing darkness it split the vestiges of the pink and orange sunset into gentle ripples. They sat in rickety plastic chairs facing the water, the old porch creaking beneath their weight.

Fixer’s gun was propped up on rusted table to her left, the barrel held up into position on the rotted railing with a chip of concrete. Out of habit she checked through the scope, grateful for its night vision lens, but once again saw no signs of activity far across the water. The raiders weren’t expected until late in the evening, but to be safe they arrived well in advance to set up.

The opposite shore sat just as dark as it had been all day, the ruined warehouse across the water sitting empty, just waiting. But they would be there, in time.

She was enjoying herself immensely. Deacon, on the other hand, was twitching down to his small toes and flipped between checking their equipment (for the thirtieth time) and pretending to sit down and relax.

Her partner liked to talk, to ramble, to bullshit, to obfuscate. But when it was just the two of them out in the quiet woods, all the talk seemed to go out of him, and he was at a loss for what to fill the space with.

It would have been funny if it wasn’t so annoying.

“Stop it,” Fixer said, swatting his jiggling knee.

“Why would you ask me to come on a mission like this?” he moaned, picking at a loose thread on his flannel shirt.

“I didn’t,” she replied flatly. “Dez asked us to go together. You were there.” She shivered. “I wish we could light a fire.”

“Aw, you cold partner? Come here, I’ll warm you up.” He grinned, arms spread wide.

“My corpse will be flung into the Glowing Sea via giant catapult before I take you up on that offer,” she replied, matching his grin.

Whatever he was going to say was interrupted by a bird call in the distance. Fixer still hadn’t developed an ear for that, but Deacon’s face went taught with concentration immediately.

“That’s for us,” he said, standing and heading for the line of trees behind the cabin. Fixer followed, unsure what was going on, but sure enough there was an agent waiting for them just before the invisible line of radiation spilling out from the south. One of Drummer Boy’s new protégés, in fact. Slider? Scooter?

“Hey Jack,” Deacon greeted him in a low whisper. Ah well, she was close. “This is unexpected.”

“Got some intel, fresh off the press and just for you two.” Jack handed over a piece of paper, folded in half and sealed. Deacon opened and skimmed it, then gave it to Fixer.

_Targets delayed. Trouble at Milton General. ETA 18h. Hold._

“Apparently we have a little longer to wait until the party starts.”

“Yeah.” Jack nodded and lit a cigarette. “But Dez says stay put until then. We’ve got eyes on the Gunner party and they’re not moving any faster. Raiders will definitely get here first.”

“And no signs of assets with them?” Fixer asked. Jack shrugged and shook his head, inhaling deeply on his cigarette.

“Gotta go. Until next time.”

They parted ways somewhat abruptly, Jack disappearing into the trees with only the tip of his cigarette still visible for a time. Night had fully set on the lake.

“So,” said Deacon, stretching, “looks like we’ve got some more time to kill.”

If the raiders weren’t going to be there until midday the next day, that definitely left them with some time on their hands. But if they didn’t have any synths with them, and neither did the Gunner party that was meeting them, the whole mission could be a bust.

He threw an arm around her shoulders. “I know what you’re thinking, partner, and let me remind you that information is information. Even if we find out they _don’t_ have any synths, we still learned something.”

“Thanks Doctor Deacon, you really know how to cheer a gal up.”

“Hey, that reminds me. Did I ever tell you about the time I was in so deep on a job that I had to perform surgery?”

Deacon kept talking as they entered the cabin again. Their sleeping bags were spread out on the floor, directly underneath the window facing the back of the cabin and the lake. That way they were out of view during the daytime, should anyone try to peek in. Of course, if they got close enough to peek in they would be close enough to receive 10,000 volts to the shins courtesy of Fixer’s traps.

Next to the bags was a cooler, which was helpfully stocked with a small supply of food and water for their stakeout, as well as the essential non-essential: alcohol. Ostensibly it was for disinfecting (per Deacon), but she had a feeling he’d been on enough stakeouts to know they were in for a long stretch of boredom.

“Anyway,” Deacon was saying, “there I am, wrist-deep in this guy, he’s screaming, the nurse is screaming, _I’m_ screaming, and then my fingers closed around the bullet and I pulled that sucker out of there. Stitched him back up, sent him on his way.”

“Was the actual doctor grateful that you stepped in and successfully saved a life?”

“No, oh no. Loaded the bloody bullet into her gun and threatened to shoot _me_ with it if I didn’t get out of her sight immediately.”

“Funny,” Fixer commented. _Bullshit_ went unsaid between them.

That was the agreement. You lie and lie and lie, and I’ll nod my head and I won’t call you on it, but you know I know you’re not telling the truth.

Just as she suspected, Deacon retrieved the bottle of alcohol from the cooler and met her on the porch again with it in hand. Whiskey, she assumed from the brown bottle.

“Oh, are you injured already?” she asked innocently.

“Yeah, my stomach is killing me.” With that he twisted off the top and took a swig directly from the bottle.

“Figured you weren’t the type to drink on the job.” She tried not to sound judgmental, but a tinge of it must have worked its way into her voice if his guarded expression was anything to go on.

“And you’d be right, Fix. It’s not professional, but more importantly it’s not smart.”

“So…?” She gestured.

“So don’t ever do it,” he finished, handing her the bottle.

She drank. It hurt, she had to admit. Even before the bombs fell she didn’t partake more than socially, but especially now that the strongest taste available was that of 200-year-old cola her tongue wasn’t used to the sudden burn.

“Well, that definitely warmed me up.” She gagged and handed the bottle back. Deacon set it on the table between them, next to the gun.

“So you’re really into this kind of thing, huh?” He gestured to the lake.

“I guess I’ve always been kind of a nature nut, yeah.” Deacon chuckled at that. “Seriously! My dad always took me fishing as a kid, and we used to have family camping trips. Camped here once, actually.”

“That’s a nice picture: a happy family, everyone has all their teeth, the sun is shining, and Lake Coatchewy here full of fish that only have one head.”

“Cochituate.” He was doing it on purpose. “Co-chi-chew-ate.”

“That’s what I said.” He took a drink.

The shifting, aurora-like glow of radiation was slightly behind the cabin, but the blue-green tinge still floated over Deacon’s face in the darkness. It was a wonder he could see anything at all with the sunglasses, really, but in ten months of working together she had yet to see him without them.

As a formality she checked through the scope again, but still nothing. A breeze floated past, and Fixer tugged the worn blue jacket closer to her. She didn’t wear it often; it was hard to, what with the chest gear and armor, but there was no point wearing all of that for a recon mission. It was just the vault suit, and though it felt like a second skin, like something she wasn’t even consciously aware of most of the time, it wasn’t the warmest thing in the world.

Deacon’s clothes were old, a set she’d seen him wear many times before: a worn flannel rolled up at the elbows, patchy jeans, boots with the tongues all out of alignment. He smelled good, though. Like a farm, like Brahmin. There was a little human musk, too. It smelled kind of like home, or what she figured home could smell like in a place like this.

Deacon’s drawling voice broke the silence and her train of thought. “Want to play a game?”

“Like what? Two lies and a truth?” He liked that one, gave him a chance to flex his charisma and hone the lies. Fixer didn’t care for it, because he never actually fessed up at the end about which one was true.

“Sort of, but I have a new spin. How about I tell you something I think is true about you. You can confirm or deny, and I have to guess if I was right based on your reaction. Sound fun?”

She shrugged noncommittally, propping her feet up on the railing.

“You can go first, if it would make you feel better.”

“Alright,” she replied, “it would make me feel better. Let me think.” Shallow waves lapped at the shore as a moment went by. “Okay, how about this. You’re a natural redhead, like me.”

He barked with laughter. “Nah, there’s only room for one of those in our little two-man band. Maybe someday I’ll grow mine out for you and show you my luscious black locks.”

“I’ve seen your eyebrows when you haven’t dyed them in a while, D.”

“Shit, Fix. It’s not fair if it’s not a guess.”

“You never said that.”

“Alright, let me show you how it’s played. Fixer, you actually like Carrington.”

She sputtered. “How dare you?”

“You pretend you hate him like everyone else, but you secretly think he’s tolerable.”

“No,” she denied flatly.

“Yeah,” he countered.

He stared at her. She stared back. Then she threw up her hands. “Fine, he’s not that bad all the time. I think his grumpiness is endearing, when he’s not riding my ass about something.”

“Deacon: 1, Fixer: 0.”

“I think my first question earned me a point, but fine. My turn? This one’s actually a guess. Your eyes are brown.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, but how did you know?”

“It’s the most common color, so I just figured the odds were on my side. But...I think you’re lying. They’re not brown.”

“Well, how are we gonna prove that, huh?”

“How do you think, dummy?” She tapped her temple, mirroring where the glasses were on his face. “Lose ‘em.”

This was a gamble, and Fixer knew it. Deacon was a friendly guy, very open and physical, and yet at the same time gave absolutely nothing away. He had his firm limits. He’d laugh it off if you got too close to his boundaries, but he’d ramp up his security that much more. He was a brick wall plastered over with a somewhat convincing painting of an open window.

And because of that, Fixer almost fell out of her chair with surprise when Deacon reached up and removed his glasses.

It was dark, so she scrambled to light up the area with her Pip Boy, being careful to turn the brightness down and keeping it pointed away from the lake in case of watchful eyes across the water.

Deacon leaned on the arm of his chair towards her, fixing her with a steady, if smug, gaze. “You’re right, hotshot. Blue.”

Her Pip Boy’s light was green, but she could tell by the way it reflected off his irises that that was the truth.

It was mortifying, honestly. Deacon was handsome, not that she didn’t think so already. Glasses don’t hide that much of a person’s face. And yet without the glasses it seemed like a whole new avenue of expression opened up on him. For someone who was such a goof and a faker, Deacon had ridiculously intense eyes.

He had to wear the glasses; he would give everything away if he didn’t.

Right now he was giving away amusement at her bewilderment, and maybe even a little...fear? Vulnerability? Had she opened Pandora’ box by wanting this so badly?

“Okay, okay,” she said, attempting to recover. “Very nice baby blues you got there. It’s your turn.”

He replaced the glasses. “You’re a total lightweight,” he said immediately. “My guess is that three shots of this and you’d be completely out of it.”

“That sounds more like a bet.”

“No, a bet would be me saying something like, ‘Hey Fix, I’m pretty sure you couldn’t walk a straight line in the sand after chugging some of this whiskey.’ And then, like, ‘I bet you three caps you can’t.’ That would be a bet.”

“Well, I’m such a lightweight and a goody-goody that I’m not going to take you up on that offer because you’re absolutely correct. And there is a difference between having a good time and potentially compromising your performance on a mission.”

He whistled low. “Wowie, you sure are a goody-goody.”

“Always the DD, me.”

“What’s a DD?”

“Designated driver.” She relaxed into the chair. The whiskey had loosened her up a bit, but she wasn’t interested in having more.

“...and what’s that?”

Fixer moaned, shoving her palms over her eyes. “This is nuts. This whole world is nuts. The designated driver is the person who goes to the party with their friends but doesn’t drink because they have to drive everyone home.”

“Drive, like cars? So were there people who would drive after they drank or took chems and stuff?”

“Yeah, it was a real epidemic, actually. Really sad. A few of the first cases I assisted with were related to drunk driving accidents.”

“But you didn’t do that when you drove?” There was a strange lilt on the last two words, like they felt weird to say.

“No.” He looked at her for a while. There were roads and junked cars that would never move again all over the Commonwealth, and to Deacon they may as well have been alien technology. “I miss driving.”

“What do you miss about it?”

She closed her eyes. “I liked the freedom, just being able to get in and go wherever I wanted. I would roll down the top, let the wind blow my hair around, and play music. It made your problems feel far away, like everything could be simple.”

Deacon always ate up old world stuff like that, and to be honest it was nice to be able to tell someone who wanted to hear about it. She’d tried bottling it up and pretending everything was fine for the first few months, but that hadn’t exactly been beneficial to her mental state. When she met Deacon, though, everything kind of felt okay for the first time. The Railroad gave her a goal, yes, but with Deacon she felt like maybe things didn’t have to be so bad. Maybe you could carefully consider everything around you, and sort out the serious stuff and deal with it, and mercilessly ridicule the not-so-serious stuff.

Don’t sweat the small stuff, that was an old world lesson she’d never learned until now.

Again, however, her thoughts were broken up by the sound of an owl in the distance. At first she thought perhaps it was another runner with more news.

Her brow furrowed, and she gave Deacon the hand signal for “something’s up, stay still.” He obeyed immediately, frowning.

“Is that one of our guys?” she whispered.

“No, we do chickadees and mourning doves.” Birds she would have heard pre-war. No wonder Jack’s call hadn’t registered; regardless of the fact that the birds were long extinct, to her ears the sound was perfectly normal.

“That’s a great grey owl.”

“And?”

“And they’re not native to this area, like, at all.”

A branch snapped, and Fixer instinctively reached for Deliverer on her hip holster, the one thing she hadn’t been dumb enough to take off.

Then, out of the darkness, a muffled male voice said, “Aw fuck it, just go get ‘em!”

“Ambush,” she told Deacon at the very moment he told her the same.

Multiple armed men came crashing out of the woods towards the cabin. Fixer went left and he went right, and gunfire began to ring out. The only giveaway to the attackers’ positions was the flare of their muzzles as they shot.

Taking cover behind a large tree stump, Fixer peered out and waited for the nearest flare to appear, then carefully aimed up and over and shot whoever it was in the head. They fell.

She didn’t aim so well on the next target, shooting the arm holding the gun first and then having to guess where the body was, but soon enough that one went down, too. She reloaded, and meanwhile similar sounds were heard on the other side of the cabin as Deacon made equally quick work of the attackers.

That’s when she heard a sound that made her blood run cold. The telltale whir of an Assaultron, the red light throwing the whole area into sharp contrast. Fixer felt panic creep into her muscles.

Nate had been a military man. She’d seen plenty of these things up close, though deactivated. Her fellow man turning sour and becoming things like raiders hadn’t bothered her as much as the robots, however. Growing up around Handys and other helpful bots, she’d never been on the receiving end of a killing machine’s cold, indifferent violence.

Said killing machine tore through the trees like they were paper and sprinted towards her. Something was a little different, though--the Gunners’ skull spray painted on the chassis.

She stumbled backwards but kept her arm steady, showering the thing with bullets. She should have brought the rifle, at least that would have had some more stopping power. As it was the Assaultron didn’t stop, didn’t even seemed phased, and Fixer kept backing up until she tripped over a downed log and fell into the shallows of the lake.

Cold water instantly soaked into her clothes and she cried out, quickly reloading again. The red eye was boring into her, black metal claws bearing down, and she was taking hits, could feel spots of blood blooming over her body.

Fixer grit her teeth and screamed, screamed like a rabid banshee, like a starving lioness, like a young child hopped up on Sugar Bombs when Sunset Ranger came on TV each Tuesday at six.

Deliverer clicked. Out of bullets. No more mags on her. Everything else was in the cabin. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Then there was an incredibly loud noise. The Assaultron’s head exploded spontaneously.

No, not spontaneously.

Deacon was there, holding her rifle. He lowered it, shaking like she’d never seen him do, and then he propped it on his shoulder and ran to her, dropping to his knees in the lake muck.

Suddenly it was dead quiet, the ringing in her ears the only sound.

“Come on, partner.” He had hooked his arms under hers and was pulling her up. Oddly she couldn’t stand, found herself dizzy and in possession of two legs that didn’t seem to want to work. Deacon practically dragged her up the steps and into the cabin. He quickly lit the small lantern near their sleeping bags and yanked a first aid kit out of their duffel. Fixer watched as though through a thick pane of glass. Her mind felt like it was surrounded by a buzzing forcefield and it was floating above her body.

Her body was hurt, badly, but at the moment she barely occupied it, didn’t even resist when Deacon began to tug her suit off.

“We gotta get you into something dry, as soon as these wounds close up.”

Ah, was that the prick of a stimpak into her leg? And into her hip? And into her shoulder blade? Must have been, because her body immediately began to feel better.

“Okay Fixer, I need you to say something to me. Anything at all. I need to know my buddy’s consciousness didn’t ascend to the fifth astral dimension without me.”

“I’m fine, stop fussing,” she said, or thought she said, but what came out what more like a low whine.

“It’s just a little shellshock, Fix. You’re gonna be okay. See, you’re not even bleeding anymore.” He was babbling, hands rushing over each part of her, wiping away blood, wrapping up the faded remainders of the cuts. Her legs worked enough that she could help him by stepping out of her suit, and soon she was being wrapped in something warm and dry. Something that smelled amazing, like home.

Then she was being pushed into one of the sleeping bags and Deacon was climbing in with her.

She was shivering even in the dry clothes, but the heat of their bodies trapped in the sleeping bag slowly began to warm her. His heartbeat slowed from hammering to steady as he relaxed, sure now that she was going to be alright.

Unable to wrap her mind around any other thoughts, Fixer focused on his breaths, counted the intervals between each one, matched her own breathing to it.

She fell asleep.

* * *

 

At some point when it was still dark, Fixer woke up.

It was not the gentle, fluttering eyelids kind of waking up, but a desperate intake of breath and wild eyes snapping open as she felt herself being shaken by the shoulder.

“Fix, wake up.”

She bolted upright, throwing the top cover of the sleeping bag off of them. “Oh god, what is it? More?”

“Shh, no. Relax.” Deacon eased her back down. “You were freaking out.” She became aware of her muscles spasming, lingering effects of a panic attack. She tried to focus on her immediate surroundings instead, noting how quiet the night was, just a few insects sounding off amid the slow slosh of the lake.  Deacon’s breathing. Warm skin against her.

That was strange. His arms were bare and hers were not. But her suit had been soaked, so what was she wearing? It was hard to see in the dark, but her eyes caught the pattern of his flannel shirt. Huh.

Deacon was wearing his t-shirt. He’d given the flannel to her. What was more, he wasn’t wearing his sunglasses.

He unselfconsciously wrapped an arm over her upper chest. “That’s it. You really had me worried, you know?”

“Me? What about the people trying to kill us?”

He laughed. “They do try, don’t they? Someday they’ll figure it out.”

“They were Gunners.”

His expression turned serious. “Yeah, I saw. It’s just a theory, but I think those may have been the Gunners that our raider friends were going to meet. They must have found out about us and tried to snuff us out before we could cause trouble.”

Fixer managed a small smile. “When will they learn?”

“Right? You can bring all the Assaultrons you want, but Deacon and Fixer are here to stay.”

He’d told her he didn’t often work with partners. His job was to gather intel, to hide in plain sight, to morph from place to place and person to person, changing clothing and personalities in equal frequency. A partner could do more harm than good to a person like that.

And yet everything had gone so well. They rarely split up these days. He never complained that she was holding him back, never gave any indication that she wasn’t keeping up with him to his satisfaction. She was like his bodyguard, obfuscating his presence behind hers. You don’t dot the Commonwealth with successful settlements, help everyone and their dog with their problems, and blow up the flippin’ Institute without gaining some notoriety. She would show up and smile and chit chat and accept the handshakes, and Deacon would flit around in the shadows and soak it all up.

It was working for them, and thank goodness, too, because she couldn’t imagine life without him.

Wait, what?

Oh hell, she couldn’t.

The Institute may have been gone but there was plenty of work left to do. Anti-synth sentiment wasn’t going anywhere. Synths that had escaped before the explosion were still very much in danger, ostracized or traded like cattle or liable to be attacked. She’d been folding them into her settlements where possible but a lot of them were still out there, needing their help. She wasn’t going to leave the Railroad anytime soon, and she wasn’t going to stop being Deacon’s partner unless the day came when he wanted her to.

The thought hadn’t even occurred to her until just now, being so busy running this way and that, thinking of everyone else’s problems before her own because she couldn’t bear to linger on her own messed up feelings after everything that had happened.

“Hey,” she said softly. “Thanks for being the calvary. I thought I was toast.”

“They’d never let me live it down if it got out that I let the Savior of the Commonwealth die,” he joked, squeezing her shoulder reassuringly. He couldn’t say “you’re welcome”. This was his way, to joke himself out of a serious moment.

But he didn’t need to say it because his body language was giving it all away. So Fixer gave it away right back, relaxing into his embrace.

“You’re stuck with me, D. You don’t get off the hook that easy.”

“Well thank goodness for small miracles. You know I don’t like to stop when I’ve got a good thing going, and it’s been a long time since a thing has been this good.”

She knew exactly what he was thinking about: Barbara, the one story he told that she would bet her life was true. He had loved Barbara the way she loved Nate. They were two broken halves of people. Their jagged edges weren’t a perfect match, but they still managed to line up just well enough to forge a passable whole.

“Hey, hold still,” he said suddenly, reaching up with the arm that had been around her shoulders. “I think there’s a piece of robot guts in your hair.”

Deacon’s callused, capable fingers slid into her hair close to the scalp and a full-body shudder overtook her. He pulled up gently, working her tangled hair through his fingers, and sure enough managed to dislodge a tiny shard of glinting metal. He smiled, flicking it across the room unceremoniously.

She could see well enough to meet his eyes, and then she said exactly what she was thinking, which was, “Please don’t stop.”

Deacon chuckled low and deep in his chest, and she couldn’t help but get closer to the sound, especially when his fingers returned to her hair. Starting near her scalp with only the tiniest hint of nail he slowly detangled as he went, and it was--god, it was good.

This had never happened before. Sure, they’d been practically glued at the hip for the better part of a year; sure, they’d shared tight spaces, been right on top of one another behind a barrier as a hail of bullets rained down; sure, it seemed normal to share a bottle, share a cigarette, swap clothes (Deacon looked particularly fetching in the tight red ensemble), but…

But never Fixer burying her nose into the crook of his neck, inhaling that scent that set her heart racing. Never Fixer clutching at his bicep as he carded through her hair.

He pulled her close and their fronts lined up, their calves neatly slotting together. “I know you can handle yourself, Fix,” he said, practically a whisper, and it sent tingles through her. “But don’t ever, ever do that to me again.”

It was too much. All the things she avoided thinking about for so long, the feelings of having lost so much, of having found so much, of realizing how easy this actually was, that it didn’t have to be complicated...it was all there, spilling out of her faster than she could bottle it back up.

She clutched at his jaw and he inhaled sharply. She couldn’t meet his eyes but stared intently at his lips, and something about the way he parted them and tightened his fingers in her hair gave her all the signal she needed to close that last, tiny space between them and press her mouth firmly to his.

Deacon seemed to liquify at the contact, melting into her, pulling her head closer to him. He met her kiss with equal parts shock and relief, and Fixer gasped when a hint of tongue played against her bottom lip.

Without hesitation Deacon rolled over so he was above her, strong arms holding her down as they kissed. She held his head in her hands and changed her angle and then their tongues truly met, his mouth hot against hers, tongues meeting and sliding and tasting faintly of whiskey. Deacon moaned.

He broke off with a final peck on her lips and then, like he couldn’t help himself, a freckled cheekbone. Fixer looked up at him. They were both panting.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey yourself,” he replied.

“This okay?”

Deacon exhaled on a disbelieving laugh. Then he pushed his hips gently down to meet hers, just enough so that she could feel his excitement growing in his jeans. “Nah, this is the most awful thing I can think of.”

There wasn’t much heat behind it, not like his usual sarcasm, and Fixer couldn’t help but feel a little proud that cool-as-a-cucumber Deacon had completely shattered like this for her.

“What if this...changes things?” she whispered.

“Well of course it’s going to change things. That’s just what things do, partner.”

Things had changed. Pre-bomb Fixer could never have conceived of just how much they could change.

But here she was, right? She’d changed, too. Adapted. She’d spent a year doing all sorts of new things. It wasn’t easy, but she did what she had to do. She wasn’t going to spend her nuclear afterlife hiding in a bunker somewhere, or scraping by at a settlement.

It wasn’t easy, but in the end it wasn’t all that hard, either.

She laughed breathlessly, catching him off guard by wrapping her legs around his hips, and Deacon slid over her body again, this time not so much on purpose.

“Yeah,” was all she said, and then she tugged him down to her lips again.

* * *

 

Somewhere between Deacon carefully unbuttoning his own flannel and her fingers sliding underneath his t-shirt and against his firm torso, Fixer broke out into a sweat. She felt it collecting on her upper lip in between desperate kissing, and when Deacon finally managed to undo her shirt completely and it fell open, the cool burst of air hitting her felt incredible.

He didn’t say anything at the sight of her with the shirt open, nothing underneath and only a pair of panties on besides, but the disbelief in his expression said enough. He ran his fingers over her stomach and she gasped, instinctively trying to curl up, but he chuckled and moved on, cupping his hands over her breasts. Her legs were still wrapped over him and she pushed against his thighs with her feet, trying to pull him closer.

“Deacon,” she tried to say, but found her voice didn’t work all of a sudden. She tugged at his shirt insistently and he backed off enough for her to pull it over his head. She’d seen him shirtless before, of course, and had found him pleasing to look at then, too, but in the darkness, with the shimmer of sweat on the muscles of his arms and the firm line of his shoulders, Fixer thought it should be illegal to look that good.

“Deacon,” she attempted again, and this time something came out. Deacon didn’t stop, though, kept leaving insistent bites on her neck that would surely leave a mark, kept running his hands over the swell of her hips, and as a last resort to get his attention Fixer’s fingers slid down to the button of his jeans and started to work on them.

That got him to at least pause a moment, but when her hand rested against his clothed erection his hips stuttered and he groaned. “Fix,” he moaned, “god.”

“I want you,” she said, perhaps unnecessarily.

“You’ve got me, babe.”

She popped the button on his jeans and dragged the zipper down. “Don’t play coy with me right now,” she warned, slipping her hand into his jeans and making skin-to-skin contact with his erection. It was velvety soft, and hot, and throbbing. She was completely wet by now, adrenaline thrumming through her veins like this was battle. “I want this, I want you like this.”

“If you think I don’t want you too, you’re insane.”

“Tell me how much you want it,” she begged. “Put that mouth to good use and tell me everything.”

“If you think talking is the best use of my mouth,” he countered, “you are leading a very sad existence.”

Oh, that got her squirming. As if sensing the spike in her heart rate Deacon trailed his fingertips so gently down the inside of her thighs that she almost couldn’t feel it, and they came to rest on the outside of her panties, against the hottest part of her.

“You are soaked,” he observed needlessly. The pressure against her, where she was so aroused and wet, drove Fixer absolutely crazy.

“Please,” she said. It was all she had left.

Deacon pulled her underwear down and she helped by kicking them off, but then his fingers were back again, stroking down the outside of her, making contact with her engorged clit, and she arched her back. He sought the source of the wetness, slowly inserting a finger inside of her. It had been a while and he knew that, and she was grateful that he showed her mercy.

‘Mercy’ was kind of an inappropriate word, however, for what he continued to show her as he threaded his finger in and out of her, adding a second when the time was right and pushing her folds apart. Fixer was thrashing her head by now and couldn’t believe how badly she wanted this, wanted him.

Deacon, the complete goof, the consummate liar, who could give a girl whiplash the way he switched between sarcasm and sincerity.

Deacon, who removed his fingers and looked into her eyes again, waiting for her to nod. When she did, she jumped at the contact of his bare erection against her. He stroked it against her clit a few times until she whined, then he lined it up proper. It slipped inside so easily, she was so ready.

His hands slid under her hips to lift her and his length seated completely inside of her and for a moment they just held position, just breathed. She could feel his heartbeat through his groin where it pressed against hers.

He kissed her, open-mouthed and unfocused, and started to drag his length in and out of her.

“You want me to tell you everything?” he said, voice ragged. “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you about the first time I saw you, coming out of that vault, dazed and blind. I’ll tell you about how I watched you so carefully because I knew you were special. You were just what this world needed, and _goddamn_ if you didn’t turn out to be just what I needed, too.” He punctuated this with a particularly firm thrust and Fixer threw her head back and moaned helplessly.

“I’ll tell you about how badly I’ve wanted you ever since I met you, met you for real. You took everything this shitty world handed you and tossed it back better and fuck, Fixer, I don’t think I could face it anymore without you.”

Fixer’s nails dragged down his back and she met his thrusts as best she could. She wanted to kiss him and tell him she knew what he meant, that there was nothing she couldn’t do with him by her side. But she didn’t do it because she was afraid that if he stopped telling the truth he wouldn’t start again, and his desperate confessions were really, really doing it for her.

“And then I realized I wanted you just like this, with you wanting me, too.” He picked up the pace and it was all she could do to hang on. The pad of his thumb pushed into her clit, started a slow drag against it that turned rapid as she whined. “I wanted to feel you hot and wet for me. I wanted to be inside of you when I make you cum.”

God, it was going to be over for her soon. The pressure was building, and it took a few insistent twists of her hips into his hand before the spark ignited and she came, crying out his name and clenching her thighs together as well as she could with him in between them, her vagina spasming around his cock. All the while he never stopped fucking her hard, chasing his own orgasm, and the fluttering of her walls around him made it impossible to hold back any longer.

“Come on, Deacon,” she rasped. “Please.”

“Fuck, Fixer, I’m…” He shuddered and his length twitched inside her, then he exhaled and pressed his lips feverishly against her breasts and neck and jaw as he emptied himself within her.

He didn’t pull out right away when his orgasm subsided, instead continuing his ministrations against her sweaty skin while his length softened. She caught his lips with hers and they kissed deeply. Then Fixer pulled back and laughed quietly.

“That’s amazing, you know.”

He cocked his head, confused. “What is?”

“That all it takes to get you to tell the truth is a little bit of sex.”

At last he pulled out of her and rolled next to her. The air was chilly against her where he had been, especially on the mess of combined fluids between her legs.

“Who says I was telling the truth? Maybe the real lesson here is that all it takes to get _you_ to believe me is a little bit of sex, hmm?”

She smacked him on the shoulder. “I’m not dignifying that with a response.”

They got up reluctantly, fetching rags and water to clean up. Deacon moaned about it, but they used the rest of the whiskey as makeshift disinfectant on their hands.

Fixer pointed at the sleeping bag. “Salvageable?”

He gave the thumbs down sign. “Negative, soldier.”

She shrugged, kicking it aside. They could burn it in the morning, after the raiders were dealt with and it was safe to make a fire. That was if the raiders were still coming, however. Maybe the Gunners had turned on them, too.

When the fuss was over the exhaustion hit Fixer like a freight train.

“Yeah, I’m exhausted too,” Deacon confirmed, flopping onto the remaining sleeping bag. “No idea why though. Didn’t do much today.”

Because she knew it would rile him up Fixer nodded. “Yeah, me neither.”

“Ouch!” He clutched his heart.

“You started it.” She laid down beside him and he threw the top cover over them. He pressed a final kiss into her temple, the tenderness still so unbelievable to her, but she wouldn’t say anything if he didn’t.

“Hey,” she whispered as they began to feel sleep creeping in.

“Yeah?”

“This ain’t so bad, is it?”

Their hands met under the covers and Deacon entwined their fingers.

“Sure ain’t.”

* * *

 

There wasn’t much good to be said about raiders, but this group sure was punctual.

Right at half past noon they began to trickle out of the trees around the warehouse, and to both of their surprise the Gunner group showed up too, though their headcount seemed a little low for what one would expect. The groups weren’t generally on friendly terms, so this arrangement must have been a particularly uneasy alliance.

“Do you see anyone?”

“Yes.” She tracked the movement carefully with the scope of the rifle.

“I mean, synths.”

“ _Yes_ ,” she reiterated.

“Number?”

“There’s four. No, five, they just brought another one out.”

“And you’re sure they’re not just settlers or something?”

“Positive.” The hesitant way the five figures carried themselves, and the way they were handcuffed and shoved around, was enough proof for her. Even if they weren’t synths she wouldn’t very well have left them at the mercy of gangs like this. Her finger slipped onto the trigger soundlessly.

“Now partner,” Deacon said lazily, “this is just a recon mission. No gunslinging.”

She snorted. “Yeah, I know. Just like there was no gunslinging last night. I’m just stretching my finger.”

“Right, that makes sense.” He leaned back with his arms crossed behind his head. “Just wouldn’t want to give you the impression that it’d be okay to maybe make a left to right sweep on the shore there, maybe kick up a little sand as a diversion.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” 10 bullets in the expanded mag. Nine targets. Five possible synths.

The lead raider and the lead Gunner met in the middle, with the chained synths on the raider side, and she waited until the box of caps switched hands before pivoting to the left with the scope and letting loose a bullet which ripped sideways up the slope of the sandy bank. A spray of sand shot upwards.

She cocked the gun. She knew every part of it by heart, didn’t need to stop what she was doing to get ready for the next shot.

Exhale. Boom. Cock. Pivot. Exhale.

Deacon sat back and watched her work, not needing a close-up eye on the distant shore to know that the enemies were dropping one by one before they even knew what hit them.

The mag clicked out but the job was done. Fixer pulled back, a rim of red around her right eye where she had been aiming intently. Even without a scope the haze of sand was still visible, but as it cleared there were only a few small figures left standing there.

She looked to him expectantly.

Deacon shrugged. “Eh. Seen better.”

She rested the rifle against her shoulder and laughed. “Now that is a lie if I ever heard one.”

* * *

 

They grabbed their packed things and began the journey to the other side of the lake. Fixer was pleased to see that Jack’s team was already there, picking useful things off the bodies and debriefing the synths. And they were, in fact, synths. Fixer was more than happy to brag about it.

One of the survivors, a young teenager named K3-20, eagerly shook Fixer’s hand when she introduced herself. “Thank you,” he said earnestly. “We hoped the Railroad would come, but sometimes you just can’t help but want to give up.”

“But you didn’t,” Fixer said firmly. “You held in there. You’re tough stuff, kid.”

K3-20 noticed Deacon standing behind her. “And you, thank you as well. You saved our lives.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Deacon, smiling.

When the boy wandered away, Jack approached. Now that the mission was a success he seemed much more relaxed. “Good work you two. Heard about the late night Gunner visit, but I’m glad to hear you made short work of them. Sounds like this turned into quite the ordeal.”

Deacon caught Fixer’s eye and winked. “Nah,” he said. “It was pretty simple.”


End file.
